How to format your references using the Visual Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Visual Neuroscience. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Florig HK (2002). Public health. Is safe mail worth the price? Science 295, 1467–1468.

A journal article with 2 authors

Carlini A & French R (2014). Visual tracking combined with hand-tracking improves time perception of moving stimuli. Sci Rep 4, 5363.

A journal article with 3 authors

Paraje G, Sadana R & Karam G (2005). Public health. Increasing international gaps in health-related publications. Science 308, 959–960.

A journal article with 20 or more authors

Clark PU, Dyke AS, Shakun JD, Carlson AE, Clark J, Wohlfarth B, Mitrovica JX, Hostetler SW & McCabe AM (2009). The Last Glacial Maximum. Science 325, 710–714.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Paschedag AR (2004). CFD in der Verfahrenstechnik. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

Hashim R & Abdul Majeed AB eds. (2015). Proceedings of the Colloquium on Administrative Science and Technology: CoAST 2013. Springer, Singapore.

A chapter in an edited book

Abdi AA (2013). Engaging Africanist Philosophies and Epistemologies in Education for Social Development. In Engaged Scholarship: The Politics of Engagement and Disengagement, ed. Shultz L & Kajner T, pp. 55–67. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Visual Neuroscience.

Blog post

Fang J (2014). Origami Robot Folds Itself, Then Just Crawls Away. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/origami-robot-folds-itself-then-just-crawls-away/ [Accessed October 30, 2018].

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (1997). Proprietary Schools: Millions Spent to Train Students for Oversupplied Occupations. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Faello JP (2012). Is strong corporate governance associated with informative income smoothing? (Doctoral dissertation thesis). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Healy J (2013). Utah Judge Unexpected as a Hero to Gay People. New York TimesA11.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Florig, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Florig, 2002; Carlini & French, 2014).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Carlini & French, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Clark et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Visual Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Vis. Neurosci.
ISSN (print)	0952-5238
ISSN (online)	1469-8714
Scope	Physiology Sensory Systems

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